If we discovered an alien race that seemed violent, but we were more advanced technologically, what do you think humans would do?

I hope that we would give them the benefit of the doubt and hope to use their adaptability to curb their violent tendencies.

If?

We’d probably exploit them for all they were worth, and do our best to keep others from gaining any benefit. Until we managed to wipe them all out. I’ll bet many native Americans would back me up on this.

Get Randy Quaid out of the nuthouse and into a fighter plane.
You have a better idea?

Panic.

If a superior alien race had observed us during the Dark Ages, or the Age of Empires, or the 1st or 2nd World Wars, wouldn’t they have seen us in exactly the same light? Any technology sufficiently advanced to travel over the vast distances that we know to be devoid of intelligent life, and to observe a distant intelligent race, is so advanced they would have nothing to fear from at least observing them and determining that their hostile tendencies never were exported beyond their own planet.

As long as the aliens are contained and they show no aggression towards us it would be interesting to study all about them. Perhaps we may learn something useful from them. Or we might persuade them to do manufacturing work for us at minimum wage. HA!

But more likely we would just exterminate them.

How is this different than the U.S.A and Iraq? We would just stare at each other….Very closely with our fingers on our triggers.

study them carefully.

You would probably fly around in small, cloaked exploratory craft for observation, abduct certain individuals to study, run tests and experiments on them. Of course, it would not be perfect and sometimes your tech fails and you crash or your cloak fails, exposing you to the population who will then wildly speculate.(sounding familiar?)

Btw, there are people who believe that the reports of flying objects/black clothed figures with scythes spreading gas right before an outbreak of the plague during the middle ages were actually aliens spreading the bacteria in order to “cull the herd” and to contain your population.
You might do the same in their place, especially considering your history. Of course it will never come to that because we will kill you all, nyahaha!

This is the classic ‘out of context’ problem as seen in the Spanish invasion of Central America. The culture there had survived for thousands of years which means they had a stable form of governance. However, when the Spanish arrived, they had no context to refer to. As a result, the culture was destroyed virtually overnight. This has happened over and over again.

Strangely, we don’t necessarily have to go to war with them: simply the presence of an advanced race is enough. Of course, the Spanish, as well as other European countries, had no trouble adding violence to the mix.

The US has a law that says ‘if we are contacted by aliens via electromagnetic waves (as opposed to their dropping in on us in the flesh), that no one may reply to their message. The reason? The communication might be a test to see if we’re advanced enough to receive and decode the messages. By replying, that may signal to the aliens that we are a potential threat and we might get wiped out.

Both Star Trek and Babylon 5 had berserker story lines. The first in-print reference I am aware of is Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker novels.

5…4…3…2….1…..a blast off!!

We’d probably fuck em up, because that’s what humans do, fuck shit up.

If course we wouldn’t make it sound like that. As soon as we discovered these aliens, we would automatically ascertain our right to their welfare, their land and their resources, stripping them of everything slowly but surely, in the name of the greater good, essentially destroying their identities and ways of life.
I mean, they’re violent. That’s the only excuse we need, and if they weren’t, the same thing would happen, except we’d think of another excuse. People pretty much think they own animals, nature, and even their fellow man. Based on race, religion or social/economical status, and then the actions are softened up by would be good intent. Wouldn’t be any different with an alien race that we figured we could fuck up.